It's interesting reading brain authors such as V.S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, or Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained. These authors start out claiming that the subsequent pages will provide a picture of how the "I" emerges from the operation of the brain. After describing the physical operation of the brain, we are left with as little clue about how the "I" emerges as we were at the beginning of the book. As Robert Restak, another brain author (The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own) remarks: "Despite such extravagant and hubristic statements, no one so far has been able to perform the alchemical conversion whereby "To be or not to be" can be understood in terms of neurotransmitters and brain structure."
Which is all fine, but Restack then adds, in his review of Ramachandran's book: "Nor is such a conversion ever likely since, as philosopher (emphasis added) Gilber Ryle pointed out, it would invoke the category mistake: intermingling separate and distinct orders of discourse."
The problem with Restack's conclusion is that brain science is in a bind because of philosophical conclusions that are based on the modern day scientific requirement that if you can't pick it up with a set of tweezers, poke it with a probe or measure it with a detector, it doesn't exist. In the great philosophical mind/body debates of the 19th Century, the argument was won by the scientific conclusion that because we have been unable to detect the existence of the mind in the physical gray matter of the brain, that the mind does not exist, an intermingling of conclusions from one discourse to postulates of another.
While empirical science posits an evolutionary picture in which one species evolves into another species, using as physical evidence absolutely nothing, there is little doubt that life evolved on Earth from its cellular start to its product, a body that could navigate the reality in which it found itself. The brain authors overlook the basic principle that has to operate to produce animate matter, life that can move through the environment in which it finds itself, that the physical body needs some method to navigate that environment with a certain degree of safety.
In short, life needs some sort of detector to sense the environment in which it is evolving if it is to be successful in that environment. The simplest form of detector operates with respect to cellular life that can swim in a liquid environment. The biggest danger to such life is heat, so that having sensors that can activate cilia that can move it within the environment will allow it to move away from the dangers. Temperature activates motion and the motion is away from the heat that is a danger to the simple organism.
Looking at the operation of the brain in light of its purpose, which is to allow an organism to move safely through the environment, we have to ask, what could possibly evolve that would accomplish this result? Instead, brain science looks at the physical matter of the brain, and, finding no mind, creates, in the words of the popular press, a human brain that processes information and spits it back out as emotions and memories.
Absolutely nothing about this definition evokes the basic purpose of the detector as something that allows animate matter, life, to navigate its environment safely. When we focus on the evolutionary need for a detector, we can break down how that detector has to operate.
The first requirement for operation of such a detector is that it is able to collect information about the environment. The outside world, the physical reality that surrounds, but is not a part of the animate matter, exists independent of the "I" that is going to have to navigate it. As a result, the "I", the animate matter, is going to have to have some sort of method to get a picture of that outside reality inside. The simple cellular life that moves as a result of heat field changes is performing this function simply by having a detector that allows it to know when it is drifting into inhospitable fields. The connection is direct. The matter doesn't move until the field directs it to move.
With ambulatory life, animate matter that directs its own movements through the environment, simple reaction is not sufficient to ensure a degree of survivability. We have to walk through the wooded forest without running into trees or falling off cliffs, and we have to cross dangerous streets filled with death dealing cars and trucks. When we act positively in the environment, the detector has to have a picture of that environment.
The picture of course, comes from the evolution of the complex eyes that allow us to collect the light that bounces off of the hard edges of reality. That light contains information as to distance because as light expands, it diminishes uniformly over distance, and thus, with the light striking different hard edges of reality, the reflected light waves we see contain information as to distance as a result of their comparative strength. The light, as a result of the frequency changes that result from it striking the hard edges of reality, also contains information as to color and texture.
But, the eye collecting light is not sufficient to allow an organism to navigate reality. The jumble of information needs to be understood, and the only way it can be understood is if the organism has some information already in place that would tell it something about the picture the light was producing. The only way that the organism could have a picture of the reality it was seeing is if it had produced a picture of that reality before and stored that reality somewhere.
This is where the brain scientists, who demand that the gray matter of the brain produce the "I" that we are all aware of and therefore know exists, fall down. With only the gray matter of the brain to deal with, they claim that this prior picture of reality is the result of the neurons, which are connected in a billion different pathways, being impressed with the pictures that come into the brain through the eyes. When the organism sees a similar picture, then the neurons impressed with that picture light up and the organism "knows" what it sees.
But this doesn't explain how, when the organism sees a cliff, it can make the choice whether to take the short cut and jump safely off the cliff, or whether it has to climb down the face of the cliff to remain safe. And it doesn't explain why one organism is willing to risk a hardy jump, while another organism refuses to jump even a foot for fear of falling. In short, the reliance on only the physical brain to explain how we move in reality doesn't account for choice and judgment in the process of survival.
The necessity for the organism to move safely through reality requires that it have some way to identify when it is unsafe to move through reality, and there is no way that the neuronic light effect can warn against potential movements that might result in danger, or even in changes in the environment that signal possible danger. Thus, instead of a set of neurons lighting up, whatever pictures our brains have must be stored in the neurons for recall when they are needed.
Recall for what? We all know that we can remember the things we have experienced, but why do we need this recall function? Why did the recall function develop?
Because, when we are walking down the path we have trod before, or we are trying to cross the car-filled street, we have to have something that will notify our physical bodies of potential dangers, the fact that the path has washed out and presents a fatal fall if we keep moving or the possibility that a car will take us out as we cross the street. We need some method that will warn us of potential dangers. How would that warning process operate?
The only way that we could know of dangers is if we had a place to compare the reality that we were seeing with the reality that we had stored in the physical matter of our brains. Instead of the neuronic pathways being connected by experiences, they are storage bins for experiences that can be recalled for comparison with reality. The recall process itself is not complicated. The sum total of the charges produced by the eye in gathering the light that produces a particular picture can store that picture in the neuronic storage bins. When a similar picture is presented to the eyes, then the electrical currents of the brain reflect the charge of that picture and course throughout the billions of passageways looking for something stored at a similar charge in the neurons.
If there is recall stored that matches the charge of the pictures coming in from reality, then recall matches reality and the organism "knows" the reality in which it is moving. The actual reality here, however, is that there has to be a place where reality and recall can be compared, and the only place this can occur is in an independent structure which is separate and distinct from the physical matter of the brain.
This detector is simple to visualize. Because it would have to be able to detect the finest discrepancies in light flows, it would have to be smaller than nuclear. It would, in fact, have to be made up of something as small as the electrons that make up the electrical energy of the brain. The electrical flows of the brain would move through this structure and, by displacing the electrons, allow the structure to form pictures that reflected the nature of the flows.
The detector, made up of electrons, could not itself be detected by our own detectors, other than as part of the electrical flows of the brain, and it would not be found in the gray matter when the brain is cut up. However, it would be able to act to protect the animate matter to which it was attached, not by forming pictures that resulted in an agreement of recall with reality, which would merely allow the organism to move through reality, but by refusing to form pictures when reality didn't agree with recall.
Thus, as long as we were moving through a reality that could recall pictures of ourselves having moved safely through that reality before, we could move. But when a picture of reality appeared that didn't match the pictures we were forming from recall, the path in front of us opened up into a chasm, or a car we hadn't seen comes out of nowhere, then, with two different pictures and only one place to compare them, the inability to compare would stop the comparison process, and the electricity that was operating that process, with nothing to recall, would jump into the physical matter of the mind and the body, shocking it so that we become aware that there is a danger in reality for which we had better hurry up and find the appropriate recall that will tell us how we should act to deal with so we can continue safely along our path.
The need for a detector as a place of comparison for purposes of allowing us to move safely through physical reality should not be lost on empirical science, which is based entirely on the process of comparison, looking first at this thing, then at that thing, and putting like things into categories, creating new categories for unlike things, and then attempting to correlate the categories into principles that would allow us to compare the bigger realities. The periodic table is the prime example of this reality.
As long as we ignore the fact that there is a detector, that it has to exist because we have to have a place to make comparisons, that the by-product of making comparisons is making choices, and that the sum total of our choices, our experiences, is the "I" that is us, we will continue to flop around in a fantasy world where empirical science is free to make up what it wants while ignoring the realities that we need to survive.
Peter Bros is the author of the 89volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com